[Thinkpad] misc rants longer longish

[bruce edwards]

Hope you are feeling better . . . At any age the body requires sleep . . . I 
am sure you are aware of this, and while at 20 it is actually an aphrodisiac 
to both sides of the gender equation to be able to endure large periods 
without sleep you are functionally past the age (pheromonally speaking) 
where that attribute will lead to real status or deference  (while not the 
only reason, even if they were conscious of it, that is one reason why some 
of your advisors would have discouraged you from pursuing DO/MD program past 
40 (even if 40 is the new 30).  Sleep strategy is not taught in HS or 
college (and it should be). Of course no single strategy is effective for 
more then, maybe, two widely displaced individuals . . . Which means any 
'strategy' has to start with the psycho-social assessment (that after 
Darwinian evolution is the next most reviled tool in US).  I lived most of 
my adult life on 4 hr. contiguous sleep per day.  But almost always I also 
caught one or two twenty min naps (requiring about a half hour each . . . 
Too long to be accomplished during a work place coffee break but one was 
possible if I was actually allowed a min. Of a half hour for lunch.)  I 
didn't 'intuit' the strategy then implement it . . . Fortunately, or 
unfortunately, I seem to naturally be a night person (another reason Lamoni 
is hell on earth) . . . I can force REM sleep into other zones but it 
defaults naturally to between 6-8 AM, and I tend to most alert between 11 PM 
and 2 AM . . . One reason why even though my music and social skills 
(coupled with intense stage freight that has never relented (except when I'm 
actually on stage) did not suggest performance playing music became one of 
the few socially acceptable quasi legal endeavor's I could pursue.

Reason for above is not that I'm suggesting you should have adopted or could 
adopt anything resembling my sleep/waking cycles . . . But you're old enough 
that not sleeping is not something to brag about (one of items I got for 
when John comes home is a home wrist mount blood pressure gauge . . . Been 
playing with it: pre coffee, post coffee, immediately after a bike ride, a 
half hour after ride after five minutes meditation pre coffee AM, etc.  The 
numbers are interesting . . . And higher then I'd hoped (when measured 
following instructions, five minutes rest, seated with arm supported but not 
'pinched' at heart level, etc. They nudge the 135 in merc.. . . Which I'm 
interpreting as OK but higher then last 'resting' unstressed measurements of 
a decade ago . . . About the same time, post coffee, that my allergic 
reaction to corn dust eases the BP as a little spike going to about 140 then 
falling, in a half hour, to a safer range . . . ) Not using numbers 
diagnostically (calibration?) But for anecdotal bench mark . . . More like 
dB then SPL

Anyway if the John past three months demonstrates anything . . . Well two 
things actually . . . If 'reality' exists it can be correlated directly with 
entropy and entropy will kick ideological ass . . . Self denial might let 
one complete a marathon on a broken ankle but it is illustrative to remember 
the first marathon.  Even knowing that sleep deprivation led/leads to bad 
decision making it was deliberately used by AMA as a brain washing tool . . 
.  To alter allegiance you do not need electrodes to the genitals: sleep 
deprivation, low protein diet and demanding, exhausting physical labor 
(coupled with complete separation from 'base' society and gradual 
integration with target society . . . Success of this strategy is never 100% 
but under any circumstances (even when subject and target groups do not 
share a common language) starts at about 75%)   The deliberate embrace of 
brain washing, sleep deprivation (and subsequent self medication of 
practitioners . . . By the way one of Lamoni's most notable maintenance 
junkies Dr. Swanson just passed away . . . No longer lived in Lamoni), has 
led inevitably to decline of AMA as an institution in a far shorter period 
then successes of modern medicine seemed in late 40's & early 50's to 
suggest . . . Even you paper on disaster mediation tends to support my 
analysis by the way

And reason for this is not that I think you don't know the basics . . . But 
in truth we tend to not interpret our own actions correctly.  Unmediated by 
alcohol I'm solitary in the extreme.  And I have few daily 'yearnings' to be 
less solitary (roughly four days a month, from adolescence to date I am 
capable of sustaining social impulses)  It will be an issue (for me) when 
John returns.  And alcohol was frequently, if not always, linked to by 30 
miles outside of Lamoni women would talk to me . . . But alcohol was not a 
solution to social ineptness.  It was in fact self medication that masked 
nature of predicament while suggesting short term benefits.  I say this even 
now when more then a handful of women whose company I enjoy (greatly in many 
cases) claim verbally and behaviorally to enjoy my company more post 11 PM 
after I've had one or two doses of Jack Daniels or Single Malt out of a 
clear bottle (cost of such bottles starting above $150 has something to do 
with their response, which is not to imply women are shallow anymore then 
men are shallow because they notice a woman's architecture long before they 
notice whether she can walk or not).  To this day any success with women 
rests of three elements: cigarettes (for communication), whisky (for what I 
can only assume to contribute some necessary phremonal element) and 
familiars (non human frequently four legged and furred) . . .the most useful 
has always been the familiar.  But like all adaptations whisky was social 
compromise that masked my ability (i.e. It was both cause and agent of self 
deception) to analyze both health and social integration accurately.  While 
my long held belief can be challenged I have tended to belief, for most of 
my adult life, that all private social self medications are primarily self 
deceptive.  Evolution suggests that individuals are most successfully 
convincing when they 'believe' their presentation (even the most dogmatic 
evangelical orator accepts this evolutionary position behaviorally).

The tiny upside is that while response can never be linear humans do not 
have to remain behaviorally rooted to ideological self deception . . . I 
still 'believe' that straight whisky (as opposed to frau frau sugary rum 
drinks) tilts, thermodynamically, the gender equation resolution in my favor 
I have learned to not drink and drive  (which is not entirely true but while 
one drink impairs judgment I have learned to constrain by driving drinking 
to two in four hours (more or less and am willing to lurk by the side of 
road for hours if necessary) . . . And that is about as mature as I'll ever 
get on this question . . . Even when I know that alcohol is not 'good' for 
me (in excess . . . On glass three times a week of something might actually 
have minor benefits . . . I think the jury is out) . . . But even this 
adaptation exceeds what most humans obtain . . . You can take the cure but 
if you don't change your life (style) the cure doesn't last

Unfortunately I now eat salty crisp snack foods . . . Usually while watching 
alpha wave accentuating Video that does not even interest let alone amuse me 
. . . Instead of drinking a couple of beers (Guinness), losing a couple of 
rounds of nine ball at the local pub

Oh, the other thing . . . By far the more obvious, learned from the John 
event is that age magnifies the consequences of physical carelessness: 
water, sleep, diet, exercise.  For years the functional metric (with no 
suggestion as to correlation) for a 'frailty' diagnosis was inability to 
walk a quarter mile in under six minutes . . . . I walk a bunch and have 
always budgeted 20 min for a mile . . . The five minute quarter mile is not 
something even supposedly healthy people in their 30's can necessarily 
accomplish . . . . But the point here is that older you get carelessness 
about entropy ('reality') magnifies outcomes: after a certain inability to 
cover a quarter mile in six minutes becomes predictive in a way that @ 30 it 
is not (it might be suggestive)

Roughly a year a go (school board elections) I got John to walk to the town 
hall to vote . . . He was not able to make it home unassisted.  While the 
main conversation concerning his leaving Lamoni had occurred in September 
(less then a month after being back I was seriously stir crazy, barn sour . 
. . Took one final trip to NYC (rained every day)) I made one more pass 
after that walk . . . Then settled in to wait for the 'episode'.  What 
occurred was not, of course, what was anticipated, and the fact that his 
under lying health is still remarkable 'good'/'strong' suggests (though not 
definitively) that he does not have to 'live' like he does.  But the two 
principle diagnostic items for my belief that I could no longer continue the 
pattern of the previous three years were his performance on the 'walk' and 
his inability to regulate effective hydration.  Even with that I would not, 
did not anticipate the speed with which 'tipped' end of July: Friday was a 
much milder day and I had thought it was a 'good' sign that he was able to 
drive, shop, take care of chores out and about after being sequestered for a 
half dozen 'very' hot days.  Even knowing that 'weakness' and hydration were 
principle areas of concern I missed the 'moment' . . . And was willing to 
spend a lot of time and effort on alternative theories (none of which can be 
discounted yet).

So I'm not attempting to pedantic hear merely additionally cautionary: the 
short term (years) and long term (decade) cost of ignoring 'reality' 
(entropy) can be devastating (and age is a magnifier) . .. Nor will we, as 
individuals (generically speaking) ever be the best arbiters of what 
individual entropy is . . . Evolutionary constraints preclude individual 
awareness of just those issues age 'magnifies' . . . All of which is why a I 
became a fan of a 'real' psycho-social assessment (not a typical MD psyche 
consult . .. Something less esoteric and more rigorous, but that's a story 
for a different day and outside of CA & NY the concept was never adequately 
(nor rigorous defined)

So get some sleep . . . And while it is probably not a strategy you can 
implement in a hospital I actually found the unsharpened hunk of sward 
shaped  metal (which I never even took to a machine shop to see if it 
'could' hold an edge (which had been my original intention)) you gave me 
years ago (and partially because it was a 'gift') to be greatly beneficial 
for short meditation cycles . . . Not quite a teddy bear (and even original 
infant teddy bears no longer served as well) but still an aid in clearing 
and integrating brain function . . . But as I said stilling cross legged in 
the green room, or what ever the hospital equivalent might be, for twenty 
minutes (if the buzzer does not sound) with a sword would probably be looked 
upon askance.  Unfortunately there is a high probability that the majority 
of your supervisors, from now on, will view any individual behavior with 
suspicion . . . And this will not be limited solely to the incompetent ones 
. . . In fact outside of the very small pool of individuals who actually 
know how to manage teams (and I no longer include myself in that number, 
though I get closer then most) the greater the skill set of the manager the 
more initial difficulty you are likely to have . . . .

Sleep diet hydration (for which no sport beverage I'm researched is a 
sufficient substitute to H2O) . . . . If the labor pool is unending and if 
management is unconcerned about risk management (i.e. Cheaper to pay off the 
claims then support 'safe' workplaces) then pushing individuals to the 
breaking point helps with salary and benefit packages, humans being who 
humans are, evolutionarily speaking . . . But it is always strategy that has 
unanticipated outcomes: organic reaction to stress is always non-linear, by 
definition . . . Whale beaching, the new problem (and it is a problem) of 
HEC (or for that matter the corollary problem of elephants raping and 
murdering rhinos) being some not so subtle indications that all corporate 
risk management strategies are genuinely wrong headed (even the media 
stories about the 'spinach' problem last month refused, universally, to 
mention let alone address the primary problem: 1. Feeding grain to domestic 
live stock that evolved as 'forage' animals 2. Followed by rearing them 
industrially which has 3. created a situation where fecal material is 
filtered for undigested grain which is reused . . . It is not so much that 
we have 'created' a 'new' species (evolution does not quite work that way) 
but have concentrated an acid resistant variant in just those conditions 
that, predictably, will cause society the greatest problems.  (Just as 
spinach is 'safe' 'organic' carrot juice with botulina toxin has been 
discovered)

And you though you could rant!  Principally doing this one because it is 
precisely those elements of John's behavior that granted him the most 
success (in his mind) that have become most deleterious to his prolonged 
quality of life.  This is coupled by a realization that I am 
constitutionally incapable of adequately analyzing and/or modifying my own 
behavior to mitigate the same type of deleterious delusions . . . But we do 
now where to start: get the oxygen mask on ourselves prior to assisting 
anyone else: sleep, hydration, diet, exercise . . . Non linearly 
intertwined.   Not, ever, implying the homeopathy is sufficient . . . But 
I've watched a lot of 'kids' start with arrogant assumptions about what they 
will be able to continue to do at 30, now at 40 and even 50.  One of the few 
consistent rewards of aging is knowing what, even the least arrogant ones 
will be feeling with a few added years.  This has been with horsemen, 
dancers and musicians.  Age magnifies the consequences of not acknowledging 
entropy.

Oh well, blah, blah, blah . . .

Take care